Explore Granular

Granular is a Linux-based operating system, also called a distribution (or distro, for short). It is based on PCLinuxOS and aimed at providing an easy-to-use, stable, and functional Linux experience to the end users.

Starting from Granular 2 (Wolverine) onwards, Granular will be based on Unity Linux.

granularlinux.com being a .com domain doesn't need to be part of an open source project.

We wanted to save a few bucks on our yearly hosting costs.

The sites impacted are Granular Linux product site, Forums and Wiki. granularlinux.com will cease to exist after 31st October. Until then, all the existing granularlinux.com based URLs will redirect to their new corresponding locations. Special thanks to our friends at Hard Drive Recovery Associates for helping us recover from hard drive failure.

Not much of a big news: the aging SMF 1.x series installation for our forums had started to result in a huge influx of spam accounts and posts. Although there are mods that block spam content in SMF 1.x, upgrading to the latest and greatest version of the forum software became sort of imperative as it's always better to apply these mods on a more recent and secure installation.

Forum user registration is still disabled, though, due to persistent spam account registrations. When I get some time, I'll apply those spam-blocker mods to get rid of the annoying issue once and for all!

Old forum members will also notice the change in the default theme of the forums. As the previous (and gorgeous) theme Fg:.:Zm isn't compatible with SMF 2.x, I was left with no option but to change the theme to a similar looking and more compatible one. I'll work to make this theme (or perhaps some other one?) as similar to the previous one as possible.

In the meantime, if you need to get your self registered on the forums, just drop us an email, titled "Granular Forum Account Registration" at admin [at] granularproject [dot] org, and don't forget to mention your desired username. You can even use the contact form for the same.

The Granular Project has been quite silent since the past few months. The developers and other team members have been kept engaged in their respective day-to-day real life works/jobs. But as we've been telling time-and-again, you can expect a power-packed comeback in the next couple of months as we resume the development of Granular 2 then.

Now for the most recent update. I am glad to announce that Granular has joined the Open Invention Network (OIN) initiative as a licensee, becoming a part of their already many members strong list of licensees.

To make the long story short, Granular Project has agreed to not use its Linux related patents (shall we come up with some in future) against other members of OIN to help maintain a positive and amicable ecosystem of trust within the Linux world. And this also applies to the other members of OIN. So, in all, there is every reason to be proud to be part of such an initiative, whose founding members include some well established names in the open-source arena - IBM, Red Hat, Novell, and more.

Some time back we mentioned we were working on a new logo to be used starting with the next release of Granular. I am personally happy how things went during the next logo preparations. For now, we are only left with the task of finalizing it.

Things were silent in the project for some months, when until recently, the team got together to discuss plans for Granular 2 (Wolverine) among other things. And we did not just discuss plans for the next release of Granular, we have started development for it already. Some extensive amount of efforts have been spent in designing the logo for Granular 2, and I can say, it's about to be finalized. Based on the new logo, the graphics team will shortly start working on the artwork for Granular 2. All I can say right now about the logo is - it's looking good. :)

Further, we are done with KDE packaging. The version which will be part of the first beta of Granular 2 will be 4.4.0. And just to remind you, Granular 2 will be based on Unity 2010.

With it, stay tuned for more updates. We assure you we are be working hard behind-the-scenes to make your favorite distro even better.

An article on Granular has been featured in this month's issue (August 2009) of the most popular Indian computer magazine - Digit. The article has been published in its regular supplement, Fast Track to Open Source Software, in the chapter "Linux Distros".

Details on Aug 09 issue of Digit can be found here. And if you live in India, you can buy it as well.

Granular is now registered as a project at launchpad.net. This was done in order to make use of the wonderful bug tracker and task tracker they had to offer. If you already have a Launchpad account, you can straightaway start contributing to Granular over there.

Recently, a discussion was held among the members of Team Granular to decide the codename for the next version of Granular in order to start the development of Granular 2. A need was felt to follow a well-defined naming scheme for not only the codename for Granular 2, but all the future releases as well. And as it turned out, we all found ourselves agreeing to the X-Men alter ego names. It came after a good hit from one of our favorite bongs, of course.

I was suggested that we begin naming from the senior-most and well-known members of the X-Men team, and later move to the lesser-known members. That's why the name Wolverine.

The recently developed Package Archive website for Granular is all ready to for public viewing. Granular Package Archive (or GPA) is basically a website that offers information about all the RPM packages available in Granular's repositories, and much more. For now, the GPA has been configured for the "2008" repository.